Product Information
Contemporary ideas about race are often assumed to be products of specific locales and histories, yet we find versions of the same ideas about race across countries and cultures. How can we account for this paradox? In The State of Race, Sze Wei Ang argues that globalization has led to new ways of using racial stereotypes as shorthand for complex social relations in disparate national contexts. Literature then provides a key to understanding these labels and the role that race has played in shoring up state power since World War II. Ang contends that in an era marked by global economic dependence, the nation-state has only become more rather than less central to organizing social life via tropes of race that cast human and cultural differences in morally charged terms. Focusing on a series of Asian American and Malaysian texts, Ang tracks the significance of two figures in particular-the model minority and the communist spy. Appearing in novels, politics, and popular culture, these stereotypes anchor powerful narratives about race, global capital, and state sovereignty. In exploring the United States and Malaysia, two countries that seem to not have much in common, Ang reveals how they share very similar ways of conceptualizing race and sheds light on an emerging global story of value.Product Identifiers
PublisherSTATE University of New York Press
ISBN-139781438475004
eBay Product ID (ePID)14046595495
Product Key Features
Book TitleThe State of Race: Asian/American Fiction after World War Ii
AuthorSze Wei Ang
FormatPaperback
LanguageEnglish
TopicLiterature
Publication Year2020
Dimensions
Item Height229mm
Item Width152mm
Additional Product Features
Title_AuthorSze Wei Ang
Series TitleSuny Series in Multiethnic Literatures
Country/Region of ManufactureUnited States